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Will Mississauga turn the corner?

2012 promises to be a year of change for the GTA's second-largest city.

Plans to redevelop Mississauga's eastern waterfront (right side of the photo)could kick into high gear after an independent environmental review is released this year. The plan would see trails, parks and housing built where the Lakeview power plant, once the region's biggest air polluter, used to stand. (RICK EGLINTON / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

By San GrewalUrban Affairs Reporter

Fri., Jan. 6, 2012

Will 2012 be a turning point for Mississauga? Consider this: 2012 marks the first time Mississauga will take on debt in over three decades; approval for its ambitious plan to transform a stretch of lakefront is expected soon and beloved Mayor Hazel McCallion heads into the back half of her final term.

“This is a huge year,” says Councillor Jim Tovey. “The next two years is when Mississauga really becomes a city, instead of 12 small towns.”

Tovey is a rookie councillor who represents Ward 1, where the 100-hectare lakefront development is set to begin once environmental approval is granted.

“We have an opportunity like Chicago had (around the turn of the previous century), when it had its great fire. Our downtown core is now intensifying. We’re going to have 35 more towers in the downtown core.”

The vertical growth of Mississauga’s downtown, symbolized by its now iconic “Marilyn Monroe” towers, comes after more than three decades of sprawl, fueled by development revenues that poured into Mississauga’s vast open fields. Now the city is almost built out and those revenues have dwindled.

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McCallion will no longer be able to trumpet the city’s debt-free status, a fiscal feather in her cap that she often used when comparing her city with others in the GTA that have been servicing debt for decades.

Director of finance Patti Elliott-Spencer confirmed in November that 2012 will see the first debt issuance in a total of $450 million in loans the city will take out between now and 2020 to cover large infrastructure deficits. She said some debt is inevitable as the city’s growth phase slows.

But Mississauga will still face a $1 billion infrastructure gap, and 2012 could mark the year it officially matures into the country’s sixth largest city.

Mississauga’s ambition to shed its suburban status is captured in the city’s development plan for its eastern lakeshore, where the Lakeview coal-fired power plant once stood.

The plan is awaiting an independent environmental approval after Queen’s Park signed a memorandum of understanding to partner with the city on the plan last year.

Tovey says the environmental report is expected early in the year, and if decades of pollution from the plant haven’t rendered the existing brownfield unusable for anything other than industrial space, 2012 will see the beginning of a major transformation.

Extensions to the walking trails, parks and recreational facilities already in place to the west are planned along the lake, amid vibrant new residential and commercial development.

Tovey is confident approval will be granted.

“We’ve got an opportunity to transform the history of the city, to reclaim our waterfront, to plan it and sustain it on a human scale. It gives me goosebumps, what's happening in this city right now,” he said. “This is a huge period we’re entering.”

But 2012 might be even more significant for the city’s future leadership. McCallion, who turns 91 next month, has said this is her last term.

Talk swirls about who will succeed her, with a handful of pro-Hazel councillors in the mix.

Meanwhile, McCallion will have to work hard to protect a legacy badly tarnished last year with the release of Mississauga’s judicial inquiry report. It cleared her of conflict of interest charges under narrow provincial laws, but found her guilty of violating common-law principles while using the mayor’s office to pursue a land deal on behalf of her son’s company.

Now, with development revenues shrinking, she faces the toughest fiscal decisions of her career. To reduce a proposed 7.4 per cent increase in the city’s share of the 2012 property tax bill, McCallion’s council will need to cut front-line firefighters, close a community centre, reduce library hours and cut back on snow removal — just some of the alternatives staff have recommended.

Either way, 2012 will be crucial for McCallion’s legacy and the city’s new era.

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